[afhdshufdufdo]

Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.'

Notice the word "especially". Scientology is based on the idea of what some might call aliens having superhuman powers. In atheism, a number of superhuman powers, i.e. things that humans cannot do, are ascribed to science- even though there is nothing that disallows that God could be involved in everything from the big bang to evolution, somehow the Big Bang and Evolution take on a life of their own, without full understanding of them.

Darwin takes the place of a prophet, although Darwin himself was not an atheist [1] and said, "Science has nothing to do with Christ, except insofar as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence."

Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't. They put up billboards, organize, take donations, have musical rallies at military bases with atheist songs, and pass out literature like evangelical religions. And they are as intolerant and unaccepting as well. I find them quite obnoxious, but atheism is a religion, therefore according to our freedom of religion, it must be allowed, but it should be allowed along with the free practice of any other religion in any place, at any time, in any public place.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Charles_Darw...

[gonvaled]

"Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't."

Of course they can co-exist, and atheism has nothing to say against religion: religion, by definition, is non-falsifiable, so atheism can not negate it.

Atheism is, nevertheless, very sceptical about the actual existence of a supreme being. It can't prove its non-existence, but still considers it as veeeery improbable. As "there are a million reasons which explain why we believe in god which are much more probable than the fact that god exists".

So yes, you can accept science and religion, but accepting the later can not be based on reason (because there is no logical method to disprove the existence of god)

[dllthomas]

Words have shifted a bit. In the strictest possible senses, "It's not possible to know for sure" is an agnostic position and the atheistic position would be either "I believe there is no god, whatever the evidence" or "I believe there is no god, here is the evidence". These strict uses sometimes confuse more typical uses, where "probably not, because I haven't seen sufficient evidence to make 'there is any sort of a god' more likely than other options" is called "atheist" and "shrug I dunno" falls under "agnostic".

[gonvaled]

There are lots of atheism and agnostic variations. Actually an agnostic can be also an atheist (or a theist, by the way). But here you have a nice explanation: http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Atheist_vs_Agnostic

As explained in the link, there are two kind of atheists: gnostic-atheists (strong-atheists) and agnostic-atheists (weak-atheists)

In my opinion, since proving the existence/non-existence of gods (and spaghetti monsters, and pink unicorns) is impossible, gnostic-atheism is untenable (in the same sense that gnostic-theism is untenable).

But, and I think this what matters for an atheist to identify as such, the fact that the non-existence of god can not be proved does not make it an important subject. It is just one of those things that can not be proved or disproved (by construction), and has no more relevance that the orbiting of a tea pot around the sun.

EDIT: actually, I stand corrected by this very interesting article and I will stick to the Sagan Plausability Scale for these discussions: http://www.skepticink.com/incredulous/2013/08/20/why-the-fam...

[dllthomas]

I want to be clear that I don't think it is in any way unreasonable to use "atheist" to mean "I don't think God is any more likely than Russell's teapot", just that this isn't always what it is used to mean and the two meanings are sometimes confused/conflated.

[gonvaled]

It is not unreasonable to think that "God is less likely than Russell's teapot", but it is definitely unreasonable to say "I am sure god does not exist" since, by definition, god is untestable.

I guess that what I am trying to say is that a "strong atheist" (with judgements based on reason), can not really assert with 100% confidence that god does not exist. He can, nevertheless, be convinced that the likelihood of its existence is for all practical purposes 0.

It is not that he "believes that god does not exist", it is more that he thinks along the lines of "why should I care about this particular teapot?"

[dllthomas]

It is that he believes that God does not exist, in that he asserts that the probability of God is substantially less than the probability of no God. In the same way that he believes that, having looked both ways and seen no car, he won't be hit by a car when he's crossing the street (though I'm not asserting any relationship between the magnitude of the respective likelihoods). There's the possibility he's wrong, and that'd be unfortunate, but it's what he believes in that it's what his understanding of the world says and it's what determines his actions. Using the word "atheist" for such people seems entirely reasonable. Most of them will agree that they are, in some senses, strictly agnostic as well - the categories needn't be mutually exclusive.

[dragonwriter]

> So yes, you can accept science and religion, but accepting the later can not be based on reason (because there is no logical method to disprove the existence of god)

Reason doesn't rely on falsifiability (science does, but science is a subset of reason, not the same thing as reason.)

[donkeyd]

"Darwin takes the place of a prophet"

Wait, what?

As an atheist, I never realized I believe in and worship Darwin as a superhuman controlling power. Thanks for pointing this out to me! I'll make sure to put a Darwinian altar in my house and pray to it daily, for giving me food to eat and keeping my family members healthy!

Also, talking about the actions of a small number of atheists, as if you're talking about all atheists, is just as ignorant as calling out all Christians for the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Well done, for confirming the prejudice of narrow mindedness that both your fellow countrymen and fellow Christians already have to deal with.

[dllthomas]

"Superhuman controlling power" seems more "deity" than "prophet".

[Alex3917]

> Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.'

No it's not. Your entire argument is based on a false premise.